Magnetic Fields or Turbulence: Which is the critical factor for the formation of stars and planetary disks?

February 6-9, 2018

National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

Announcement

Whether magnetic fields or turbulence play a critical role in the star formation processes has been one of the most important unresolved questions in star formation. Classical low mass star formation theory claims that ambipolar diffusion is essential to remove magnetic flux for gravitational collapse; however, many MHD simulations shows that molecular clouds can fragment and form stars under the influence of turbulence without much assistance from the magnetic fields. Since ALMA has started to offer us unprecedented sensitive polarization measurements, we may finally have data good enough to answer this question. On the other hand, more and more dust polarization observations at disk scales reveal that scattering cannot be ignored which would challenge the reliability of the magnetic field measurement but also could provide critical information on dust growths for the formation of planetesimals.

We hope that this conference offers an opportunity to facilitate the discussions on all aspects of star and planetary disk formation, such as

Magnetic field and turbulence measurements

Molecular cloud structure and dynamics

Formation of protoplanetary disks

Chemical contents of molecular cores and disks

Star formation efficiency

Sponsored by:

Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taiwan

National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

University Consortium of ALMA-Taiwan/Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan